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Hello Feisty Femmes

Hi all–I’m excited and honored to be blogging with everyone this semester and hopefully for several semesters to come. My name is Kate (never Katie!) and I am a sophomore here at the U, majoring in English and Gender and Women’s Sexuality Studies. For the nitty gritty details, I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin and have a soft spot in my heart for the Badgers.

As far as I know, I’ve been a feminist for all of my life–there was no one event that made me wake up and realize it; instead I think a culmination of personal experiences and some wonderful teachers and mentors in high school had a part in it. I’m lucky enough to have a family that, appropriately drives me crazy when I’m with them and makes me miss them when I’m not. I’ll even venture to say that my mom is one of my closest friends at this point in my life.

I used to spend a lot of time with creative writing, and now my interests have shifted towards social and women’s issues–I plan on attending law school after college. I try to do the right thing every day, and sometimes have to question if it counts when internally I wish I’d done something differently or for more selfish reasons. I watch tv shows like NCIS and Bones and am a secret Buffy and Veronica Mars buff. I listen to folk rock (Conor Oberst anyone?) and alternative rock music, and grew up on a steady diet of Bruce Springsteen, which is always on my iPod. I drink a lot of coffee, diet Coke, and a ton of tea and have found that giving up meat is far easier for me than giving up any of the above beverages.

I get angry quickly over things that matter the most to me but I think I’m learning to channel my anger into more productive outlets, such as blogging, rather than sputtering constantly to my bewildered roommates. Just this week in Italian, the professor asked how many kids I wanted in the future. When I answered “zero,” he jokingly asked how many cats I wanted instead. There are only cat ladies and not cat gentlemen, right?

I’m not as interesting as a lot of people I know are, but I am looking forward to learning and growing with all the other bloggers and readers this semester and beyond.
🙂 Kate

About the Women’s Center

The Women’s Center at the University of Minnesota advances gender equity across identities.

A unit of the Office for Equity and Diversity, we educate and inspire feminist leaders, advance an empowering intellectual environment, and advocate for an equitable University culture and community. Learn more about us at diversity.umn.edu/women.